


Seven Times Damned

by theskywasblue



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-09
Updated: 2010-07-09
Packaged: 2017-10-10 11:34:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/99289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the edge of the kingdom, a criminal named Adrick seeks his salvation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seven Times Damned

**Author's Note:**

  * For [freeradical9](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=freeradical9).



> Originally written for the [7thnight_smut](http://community.livejournal.com/7thnight_smut/) gift exchange 2009.

They took him to the excavation site on the first day of winter, in the back of an open cargo wagon, huddled shoulder to shoulder for warmth with a dozen other prisoners under rough woven blankets. The shackles froze the skin around Adrick's wrists and ankles, turning it an angry red before it began to peel away, exposing raw flesh.

By the end of the journey, three days after leaving the prison, five of the men had died. The guards opened their chains and tossed the bodies on the side of the road, where they fell amongst the snow and the bones of their unlucky predecessors.

They arrived at the camp at dawn, with the sun rising cold and golden-white over the jagged, leafless treetops and the run-down shacks with their tired trickles of smoke. Beyond the camp, the ruins stood in shadow, like the broken teeth of some great beast.

The guards gave each man a pair of soft felt boots to cover their chapped feet, one tattered and reeking blanket, and a heavy, stained jacket each, then unfastened their shackles.

No one tried to run. The guards' dogs looked emaciated and bloodthirsty; they paced at their masters' sides and gnashed their dripping teeth together, hungry yellow eyes roaming up and down the ranks of prisoners, searching for weakness.

Before allowing them to settle in the camp, the guards led them past the pit where they threw the bodies of the dead. Even though the earth and all the air around them was bitter cold there was still a smell in it--the smell of loss and sorrow.

Adrick was led to a small, frigid shack at the edge of the camp. The door was only a thin cotton sheet and it was no warmer inside than out. The single window was paned with oiled paper and a tiny tin stove stood in one corner, piping bitter smoke through a rough-hewn hole in the outer wall. There were double bunks against each wall, but the upper bunk on one had collapsed, crushing the one beneath it. A man in a prisoners' jacket sat hunched over the stove, a tangled mess of hair veiling his face from view as he smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. His hair was a strange colour, Adrick thought--a shade of rich brown that looked crimson in the low light.

The remaining top bunk was clearly occupied, topped with a thin blanket and a small, hand-carved wooden box filled with a dusting of tobacco leaves. Adrick sat on the lower bunk, pulled his blanket around his shoulders, and shivered miserably.

"You should come sit over here by the fire." The man shifted sideways on the overturned log that served as his seat, making room. "It's not much, but it's better than sitting there freezing your balls off, am I right?"

"I...yes. Thank you."

They sat side by side, sharing the meagre heat. The man had twin scars on his left cheek under his eye.

"I'm Delan."

Adrick shook his work-calloused hand, impressed by his strong grip, "Adrick."

"Welcome to the Last Outpost, Adrick." the smile he flashed had a sort of tired, fierce brightness to it, and for the first time since his imprisonment, Adrick felt a small measure of relief in finding that not all things were darkness at the edge of the kingdom.

***

They ate sour, tepid gruel and drank tea that tasted of dead earth before the guards gave them all pickaxes, long coils of woven rope, and oil lamps and led them out to the excavation site. Their task was surprisingly simple: they were to dig through the ruins of the ancient temple in search of the deity's heart. Legend held that the heart of an old god could grant anything a man desired and the king wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything in all of his covetous little life.

Adrick and his fellow seven-times damned men wanted only freedom--and that, along with more riches than even the most lustful man could ever spend in a single lifetime--was promised to whomever could unearth the heart. The rest would go back to the gallows.

Years ago, long before Adrick had even taken his first breath of life, the king had destroyed the last of the old gods, and now he was driven to feed upon its corpse like a carrion bird.

When it had been home to a deity made flesh, the temple had been a monument to power and beauty, its high stone walls concealing a network of rooms within which stretched beyond the limits of human understanding. It was said that beneath the ruins of the temple there were whole other worlds, networks of tunnels that reached out into places beyond the known dimension. Men would vanish into them and never return, as if they had dropped off the very face of the earth.

The only entrance into the ruins was a single, gaping hole in the remains of the temple foundations; beyond was a maze of tunnels and cavernous rooms, already stripped of their treasures and stylized accoutrements. Areas already explored were marked out with chalk and guide ropes.

If the caverns had one benefit when compared to the surface it was that they were warm, actually to the point of being distinctly uncomfortable. Adrick tied his jacket around his waist and was still left panting and sweating before he was halfway through the marked tunnels. Each time they found an unexplored pathway one man would break away from the group--some with mumbled farewells, most with no warning at all--and go hunting for the source of one man's salvation.

Eventually, Adrick was left alone with Delan.

"Here," Delan handed him what looked like a strip of his blanket, "tie this around your forehead. If you end up not being able to see because you're sweating too damn much, you might get into trouble. There are all kinds of pitfalls around here--holes without bottoms."

Adrick tied the strip of fabric above his eyes and wiped as much of the sweat away with the sleeve of his shirt as he could. "All holes have bottoms."

"Not around here they don't."

Adrick held his lantern higher, casting twisted shadows on the stone walls that seemed to move around them as if they had a life of their own.

"I heard some of the other men saying at breakfast that this place has tunnels that lead to other worlds."

Delan snorted. "I'm not so sure about that. But they do lead to plenty of places where a guy could break a leg. Or worse."

"Might any of them lead out of here?"

"Maybe," Delan coughed, "but I wouldn't go looking for one. You'd get good and lost first. Probably starve to death."

"So I should hope to find this magical heart instead?"

Delan broke away, turning down a narrow tunnel that seemed to plunge forever into an impenetrable darkness. Water ran from an unknown source in a finger-wide stream along one wall.

"There isn't any way out that you'll find down here--magic or otherwise--except if you die, maybe. The real escape is somewhere up there."

***

The howls of the dogs and the low resonance of a summoning horn signalled the end to their workday at just before dusk. Adrick would have rather stayed down beneath the ruins, cloaked in the damp, earthy heat if not for the silence and darkness therein, which was at best disconcerting, at worst, downright bleak. It had the feel of a tomb--most likely because it was one.

The camp descended into a wicked cold as darkness set in. Each man was given two lumps of coal for the night, another dish of gruel, and a single, bitterly oily link of sausage. It was some consolation that the guards hardly ate better than the prisoners, and every man, free or captive, sat on fallen logs around the cook-fires for heat.

Despite the cruelty he had seen in the city prison and while he was on the road, there seemed to be an unspoken understanding between the guards and the prisoners in the camp. Many talked and joked as if they were old friends; one of the guards passed around packets of tobacco to those who wanted it, and one of the prisoners doled out homemade wine into everyone's tin cups. It had to be watered down a little to be properly drinkable, but it filled Adrick's stomach with comfortable, if false, warmth.

Delan broke the ends of his sausage down into small crumbles and fed them to the guard dogs, who gathered at his side as if much accustomed to the gesture.

"Earning their trust?" Adrick asked.

"No," Delan answered, "just keeping them fed. Don't want to see the poor bastards starve to death."

No one talked much about how they had come to be there. They were all seven times damned men for one reason or another--murderers, rapists, thieves--they shared the understanding that all damned men share: that no good can ever come of speaking of the past. Delan revealed in passing that he had been in the camp five years and in and out of city prison often before then. Adrick got the impression that his life had oftentimes been a hard one.

Despite the promise of freedom that came from the possibility of finding the heart, Delan made it clear that he didn't ever expect to find it himself. He didn't expect anyone to find it, for that matter.

"This place might have old magic in it," he told Adrick on his fifth day working the tunnels, "it might even have been the resting place of a true god at some point a long time ago--if you believe they really existed at all, and it might conceal pathways to other worlds--but anything that can die, powerful or not, can rot. If this place really is a god's tomb, then we won't find anything here but bones."

"But if you did find the heart, what would you do with it?"

Delan shrugged, "Let the king have it. What do I care? He can keep his reward too...I never had a gold coin in my pocket in my whole life, wouldn't know what to do with one if I did. All I want is my freedom."

"And what would you do with that?"

"Get my sorry ass to the farthest point from that mad king and his kingdom of dead gods as I possibly can."

***

They found treasures in the tunnels from time to time--gold coins, jewels, ancient artefacts. There were days when some of the men came up from below with their jackets laden down and pockets overflowing. No one paid any real attention when that happened; guards and prisoners alike seemed to treat these things as mere trinkets. Some had huge collections, enough to make any other man rich beyond imagining--but there was nowhere to spend the coins, no one with whom they could trade the artefacts; and so they sat, collecting dust, mere curiosities that had once been honest, desperate offerings to a god.

Some nights, while the bitter winter wind howled outside their pathetic cabin and swirled snow across the floor, Adrick and Delan would play a game of tiddlywinks with old coins and the remains of a vase that Delan had brought up from down below.

"You know, in a saner world, we'd all be rich men off this dig."

_Clink, clink_ went the coins as they hit the vase, a sound like dry bones knocking together.

"Instead, all this is useless."

Adrick imagined them leaving it all behind when the heart was found, or the king gave up the chase, or died, and being hauled back to the prisons, all their endless array of treasures left to be buried by snow and time like the bones of the dead men along the side of the road.

"If we could escape," he suggested, holding one gold coin up to the light of their paltry stove and turning it around in his fingers, "we could make good use of all this."

They laughed together, knowing it would never happen, and each tossed a gold coin into the fire.

***

The first real snowstorm of that winter came about a month after Adrick arrived at the camp. It blew in just before dawn, blanketing everything in a low white haze by the time the sun came up. Standing in the doorway, Adrick could not even see the wall of the next nearest shack; it was as if the whole world had been swept away around them.

Delan took the frame of one of the broken bunks and rigged it against the doorframe to keep as much of the snow and wind out as was possible, and then broke pieces of wood off the other to feed their fire. Adrick wondered what the men were doing who lived four to a shack and couldn't break up their beds for firewood.

He supposed they would manage. Many of them had been there far longer than he had, and had lived through more than one unforgiving winter.

The storm battered the sides of the shack, made the planks moan and the entire structure sway. Snowflakes worked their way in between the cracks in the boards and swirled around them like hungry insects. They even stung where they touched Adrick's exposed skin. With nothing to eat and nothing to do but huddle around the fire, they spoke in low tones about the only thing they had of their own- the past.

"Five?"

Adrick nodded and blew warm air on his curled fingers, focusing his attention on piece of planking in the stove, which had started to blister and blacken.

"You don't look like the type."

Adrick smiled ruefully, "I'm sure that's what they thought as well. They were...quite surprised. And you?"

"What would you say--if you had to guess?"

"I don't know. It doesn't seem right to play a guessing game over something so serious."

The heavy gust of wind blew a cluster of embers from the open stove onto the frozen earth of the floor. Delan ground them out with the end of another piece of timber.

"Rape."

Adrick's heart jumped, but the swell of sudden rage he felt in the deepest part of his chest vanished as soon as he looked at Delan. "You're lying."

Delan kept his eyes fixed on the floor. He pulled dirty fingers through the knots in his hair until it fell forward to hide his face, "You think so?"

"I do."

Delan looked at him, eyes curious and more than a little wary. "Why?"

A smile turned up the corners of Adrick's mouth and he looked away, "Your eyes. They're the eyes of a man who has been hurt a thousand times or more. But they're not the eyes of a man who could turn around and inflict that pain on others."

"And how do you know that?"

"Because," Adrick swallowed thickly, "when I look in the mirror I see those other eyes already. I should know them well enough."

The story came out slowly--of the trouble Delan had found himself in, of the friend he had covered for, exchanging the possibility of a life at the work camp for the certainty of death on the street. As the tale wove together, Adrick wondered if perhaps Delan's so-called friend might have been one of the men who had raped his sister, one of the men Adrick in turn had killed. Would that have been a measure of justice, or simply a cruel twist of fate?

"You know," Adrick said finally, "you just might be the only innocent man in this whole camp."

Delan laughed, "I would never say I was innocent. That would be stretching it a little too far."

"Well, I suppose no one is truly innocent. But at least you are kind enough to feed hungry dogs, and to extend kindness to people like me."

Delan tossed another piece of wood into the fire. A shower of sparks went up and a precious wave of heat hit Adrick's face. "I was traveling once, and I met one of those...what're they called...religious guys. Cultists, followers of the dead gods...and he told me 'We're all damned once by being born, twice by hating that birth, three times by directing our hate on others, four times by failing to better ourselves, five times by believing, six times by failing to believe, and seven times by the crimes we commit.'"

This was an ancient proverb Adrick had heard many times, seen written in old texts during his studies, an explanation for each layer of hell a man could find himself in after death. There had been a time, before he too found himself truly damned, when he had wondered why there was no alternative. "I've heard that before."

"Yeah--lots of people have," Delan nodded, "but the new part he told me was that 'we are saved an infinite number of times by allowing ourselves to care.'"

***

They pulled the single mattress from Adrick's bunk onto the floor as the light of day abandoned them, leaving only the glow of the stove and the low howl of the wind. It was not nearly warm enough, wrapped in their thin blankets and their tattered jackets, and so they didn't dare undress.

Adrick pushed Delan's jacket and the stained rag of his shirt up around his neck and shoulders and dragged his calloused thumbs along either side of the fascinating ridge of his arched spine. He had more scars than Adrick had ever seen on a single expanse of flesh, and the line of each individual rib was visible underneath his skin. The frail desolation of Delan's body made something deep in Adrick's chest ache, though he was hardly better off. He was sure the jut of his hipbones would bruise Delan's backside each time their bodies came together. But there were no complaints or protests, only breathless noises drowned out by the wind as their hands pressed together around Delan's erection, fingers sliding over the slick crown.

Adrick mouthed the space between Delan's shoulder blades and pushed deep, so deep, into the welcoming heat of his body, forgetting himself, forgetting the storm, forgetting everything but the warmth passed between their patches of bared skin and the clench of muscles around him. Delan shuddered and slipped forward onto his elbows, head in his hands, gasping with each thrust--_"Please, please please"_\--like a prayer.

As they lay together afterwards--warm at last, though uncomfortable in the heavy, damp cocoon of their filthy clothes--Delan trapped Adrick's face between both hands, rough from five years hard labour, but still warm and gentle, and kissed him. Adrick put a hand on Delan's chest and thought about pushing him away, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. He relished too much such a small intimacy--one he thought had been lost to him forever the day he traded his life and his freedom for an act of revenge.

They were damned, but until hell came for them, they could still look for comfort.

***

He was somewhere deep underneath the ruins, deeper than he had gone before; and yet somehow, as Adrick turned his face towards the high, domed ceiling, there was light.

Perhaps it was an illusion. Perhaps somewhere miles above there was a hole in the earth reaching all the way down, but Adrick couldn't see it from where he stood, ankle-deep in bone-white dust as thick as a snow-drift.

A shame, for it might have presented some form of escape if it truly existed. At times, when he was below the earth, it was hard to believe that anything truly existed. As the days and then weeks slipped by, the only thing that seemed real were the nights he spent with Delan in the chilled confines of their cabin, sharing blankets and caressing skin.

The dust swirled up around his knees as he walked, creating clouds that seemed to have individual, almost human form, like images of spirits. His tracks revealed stripes of the intricately tiled floor, though the greater design was lost. In the center of the chamber sat a raised altar, immaculate, as if the passage of time had not touched it at all. The only signs of its use were tiny scores on the marble surface.

Someone, it seemed, had been there before him--perhaps years ago, before it was common practice to mark out the explored areas. Atop the altar they had left a small ring of gold coins, no doubt collected on numerous sojourns into the depths, and in the center they had placed a single polished black stone.

The meaning was archaic, but simple--a trail marker for "Home".

Adrick picked up the center stone, weighed it in his palm. It seemed heavier than its size should have allowed, and curiously warm--but the depths of the ruins regularly distorted the senses. He held it up to the light and thought he could almost see something deep within it, but again, it was more than likely a figment of his imagination.

He dropped the stone into his pocket and hardly thought of it again.

***

The king died before the season changed. In the end his life was spent chasing his heart's desire, rather than actually achieving it. His son was too practical a man to believe that the gods his father and grandfather had worked so hard to destroy could have any power left at all, and so it was no surprise that all the men at the work camp were ordered without preamble back to the gallows.

The wagons arrived at dusk on the day of the king's funeral, laden down with chains, drawn by white horses that seemed like phantoms in the low light.

Some, who had so invested themselves in the thought of their potential freedom, tried to run, and where either chased down by the dogs or shot in the back. The guards didn't even bother to take the bodies to the pit afterward.

Adrick found himself unexpectedly upset at losing his impression of freedom so quickly. He almost wanted to join those who attempted to escape; but Delan remained quiet, if not entirely resigned, and so Adrick remained with him. They were chained together and set in the back of the last wagon on the line, sitting shoulder to shoulder with their heads bowed against the wind. They didn't even watch as the camp vanished behind them.

Adrick pushed his hands into his jacket pockets as much as the chains would allow, struggling to keep his fingers warm, and they closed around something warm and smooth.

"What's that?" Delan asked as Adrick took the stone out and studied it carefully in the space between his knees, out of sight of any of the guards who might be watching.

"Just a stone," Adrick answered, "I took it from the site ages ago."

"Better hold on to it--it's a collector's item now."

Adrick chuckled. "Pity I'll never know anyone who will buy it off me."

Delan put his hand around Adrick's, squeezing tightly in an effort of reassurance. Somehow, just as he had on his first day in the camp seeing Delan's careful smile, Adrick was comforted. Delan's touch seemed to speak directly into his mind of the promise of freedom and the chance for some kind of peace. Adrick could only hope, deep in his heart, that such things were still possible for men such as them.

Pressed in between their palms, the stone seemed to pulse, as if it had a life of its own.

-End-


End file.
